Posts Tagged ‘narrative’

Update: We didn’t make it but we’d like to thanks all the people who voted for Epistory. Next year you’ll do it!

Hi Folks,

It’s the 6th Annual Indie of the Year Awards, a celebration of this year finest indie games chosen by indies fans. If you could give us a hand and vote for Epistory on IndieDB it would be great. The top 100 will be announced on the 11th of December. Let’s do our best!

After fighting an insectile corruption and embracing the power of fire, we left our heroine and her companion at the edge of the Forgotten Forest. Along the treacherous, twisting paths of her adventure, she began to uncover the secret pieces of her story. Now she must fight not to drown under the crushing weight of uncertainty and fight with dignity to restore her inner peace.

Discover new enemies, learn new magic and explore two brand new dungeons full of mystery. Be brave; for there is no turning back on the way to the truth.

After a bug in our save system was found, we cannot guarantee compatibility between the update and the current (Halloween) version. Depending on where you last left the game it will work, or not. Regardless of the state of the save, we recommend a new game because of the work that has been done in the first two dungeons.

Please be aware that this update marks the end of our early bird pricing. Epistory now be fixed at $12.99 due to the major updates that have been done since launching on Early Access.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this adventure so far. We hope you will enjoy this new chapter and we can’t wait to hear your feedback!

As promised, Epistory – Typing Chronicles is now available on Linux and Mac! If you encounter any bugs please give us a heads up and we’ll fix them as soon as possible.

The challengers amongst you will be pleased to find the new “Arena” mode in the main menu. It’s a special place where the world will finally recognize the value of your typing skills. We’re still working on the leaderboard that should come soon. It’s also a bit rough around the edges.

Note that Spanish language has been added to the game. More languages to come during the Early Access.

Here’s the patch note for the new version:

New Features

Added: Infinite Battle “Arena” mode, where you’ll soon be able to challenge yourself and get your name at the top of the leaderboard.

Added: Linux version

Added: Mac version

Added: Spanish version

And plenty of stuff behind the scene for the upcoming Chapter 2…

Various improvements

Removed magic effect on enemies’ last word.

Special characters are displayed when the required magic is locked.

Reworked “Burning Hollow” level design.

Reworked story in “Forgotten Forest“.

Bug fix

Fixed: typing the word while it moves result in some letters not colored properly.

Fixed: avatar moving using the last letter of a word typed if the typing mode auto switch is triggered.

Fixed: auto typing mode switch was not happening if an untypeable (fire) word was displayed

Epistory needs to establish a subtle, layered narrative voice within its opening moments. Join the game’s writer in a deep exploration of why this story is harder to begin than most.

Wether you’re writing a game, or a movie, or a novel: it’s always difficult to start a story. There’s just so much riding on those opening moments. This difficulty is basically the premise for Epistory’s plot, in which a struggling writer is trying to start a novel. The player assumes the role of the muse, helping the story come to life.

Epistory adds an additional complication: as well as attracting the player’s interest immediately, it must also establish the narrative voice. In this article, I’ll be explaining more about what this means and how I’ve tried to solve the problem.

What’s In A Voice?By ‘narrative voice’, I simply mean the voice of the narrator: who is telling the story? Why? And in what context? Are they speaking to the audience directly? Are they writing a letter? Is the audience an active party in the story, or are it given a camera’s eye view into someone else’s world? Ultimately, narrative voice defines the relationship between the storyteller and the audience.

Most narrative voice is established by its medium and a few quickly-gleaned implications. When a written story starts with a line like “Call me Ishmael” (a laMoby Dick), we instantly understand that there is a person telling the story to the reader. We understand that the narrator has their old world view, and agenda, and feelings. But when we watch a film and a camera sweeps across the Earth – like no human can do – we understand that a picture of the world is being presented to us impartially. We are invited to watch through a window.

Whose Voice Is It Anyway?In Epistory, the narrative voice comes from a writer who we never see. All the words of narration – from the introductory sequence to the writing stretched over the levels – are the words this writer has written in their novel. The player’s goal is to help the writer create the story: typing words and discovering things to encourage the author’s inspiration.This is a very hard thing to explain in-game: not least because we don’t meet the writer. We have to inferher presence. Originally, the game’s script did this the obvious way: it begins with a writer saying “I hate writer’s block! How am I ever going to write this story?”, and quickly settles down into the story itself, “She looked like a lost little girl”. This establishes the narration as the writer’s voice and ensures it makes sense within the context of the game.This works – but it’s messy because it creates two distinct narrative voices. The author’s (“I hate writer’s block!”) and the story’s (“She looked like a lost little girl”). Because we don’t really know which is which, we have to infer every time – and so there’s a constant dissonance. It’s hard to know who is telling the story. Also, writers tend not to ask themselves questions in their own prose, so the voice may not sound authentic to player.

A New VoiceI wanted to try and do something a bit more subtle and seamless: using a single voice that represents all the narration. I’ve tried to do this by presenting the story as a work-in-progress and showing the writer’s edits. The theory runs like this:The game begins on a black, foggy screen. A blank canvas. Then some text appears: “Once upon a time”. This is how all fairy stories start, right? The player knows that a story is beginning. But the text is quickly erased character-by-character. The story has changed, the writer’s hand is revealed by implication.The writer tries again, and this time she writes: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. This is how Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities - the best-selling novel of all time – begins. Even if the player doesn’t follow the reference (and most won’t!), they should understand that the story has been restarted.But this beginning is rejected too, and so it is also erased. The pattern has been established now: the author doesn’t know how to start the story. So, third time lucky, the narrative begins in earnest: “There was a girl. And she rode on the back of a great fox.”. And hey presto – the fog clears to reveal the player-character.

Voice of ReasonBecause there is only one narrative voice, the player can trust that it represents the words of a story being written around their actions. We build on this start by adding more interactions which make the player aware of the author – and vice versa – by changing text as the player interacts with the world. It’s a subtle idea, and maybe not everyone will get it. I expect most people won’t be able to articulate it. But subconsciously, I believe people will understand that a story is being written around them by an unseen author.

Successful execution relies on two things: using recognisable (or cliched) opening lines, so that the player understands what the writer is trying to achieve (ie, the beginning of a story); and a character deletion effect, so that the player is aware that the writer is deliberately erasing and rewriting text. Sound effects can help reinforce the idea of writing and erasing, too.

This, however, is not the whole story. While we work hard to establish and contextualise the narrator’s voice early in the game – we later sow in a few seeds of dissonance. Because in Epistory, not all is what it seems…